Not only can homes with photovoltaic cells and wind turbines generate electricity, but they can also sell that juice on the backs of grids that the power companies pay to maintain. No wonder they’re asking states to tax renewables. In Oklahoma, the wind comes sweeping down the plain. But if you decide to harness this free resource to create electricity, you may have to make monthly payments to a huge corporation. A law passed this week by the Oklahoma state legislature permits utilities to charge user fees on customers with renewable energy installations—like rooftop solar panels and wind turbines.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has sent a proposed 2015 budget to the U.S. congress, calling for greater funding for the Department of Energy's (DOE) renewable energy office and advanced energy research. The budget would increase funding for the DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) office by 22% to USD 2.32 billion, and would increase the budget for the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) 16% to USD 325 million.

As market research company GTM Research and U.S. solar industry body the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) today reported record figures for U.S. solar last year, an analyst at fellow research and consulting firm GlobalData has highlighted the importance of support mechanisms to North American solar.

Demand for U.S. solar power increased 41 percent last year driven by record growth in residential projects, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Developers installed 4.75 gigawatts of photovoltaic panels in 2013, making solar the biggest source of new generating capacity after natural gas, the Washington-based trade group said today in a statement. Demand next year will increase 26 percent as rooftop power plants become more common.

Coming off its most successful year to date, the solar industry seems to be emerging as the new cool kid in renewable energy circles with a prominent mention in President Obama's State of the Union address this week. In fact, solar was the only emissions-free source of electricity to earn a specific mention in the agenda-setting speech, a break from previous years when it was mentioned alongside the wind industry in presidential appeals to promote renewable energy.

Public sentiment toward clean renewable energy has been all over the place in recent years, including down. However, favorable attitudes toward solar, wind, hybrid vehicles, and electric cars have rebounded significantly from 2012 levels, according to a new consumer survey from Navigant Research.

Building on President Obama’s Climate Action Plan to continue America’s leadership in clean energy innovation, the U.S. Department of Energy today announced $150 million in clean energy tax credits to build U.S. capabilities in clean energy manufacturing. The credits will go towards investments in domestic manufacturing equipment by 12 businesses. Through the Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit program (48C Program), these awards will help create thousands of jobs across the country and increase U.S. competitiveness in the global clean energy market.

U.S. solar PV installations surged 20 percent to 930 MW in the July-September quarter compared with the previous three months, and the U.S. is poised to install more solar than Germany for the first time in more than 15 years, according to a just-released update from the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) and GTM Research.

Today the Obama administration issued an executive order re-establishing one of the proclamations from the climate change plans it issued this summer: significantly boosting the U.S. federal government's support of renewable energy to supply 20 percent of its energy consumption by 2020.

The pipeline of solar photovoltaic projects awaiting completion within the United States has grown by 7 per cent during the past 12 months, and now exceeds 43 gigawatts, which is enough to power more than six million US households.

Homeowners across the United States have begun a rooftop solar revolution. Since 2000, more than 1,460 megawatts of residential solar installations have been installed across the country, and more than 80 percent of that capacity was added in the past four years. In 2012 alone, rooftop solar installations reached 488 megawatts, a 62 percent increase over 2011 installations and nearly double the installed capacity added in 2010.

While the federal government is mired in the latest shutdown crisis, California continues to cement itself as a national leader in clean energy. Over the weekend, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the pioneering S.B. 43 into law. The measure creates an innovative program that allows customers of any of the state’s three largest utilities to purchase up to 100 percent clean energy for their home or business.

The United States solar industry is on track to again break annual solar installation records, according to a report released last week by the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research. The U.S. share of global solar installations is expected to climb from 5 percent to 13 percent by the end of 2013. The industry installed a record 832 megawatts in the second quarter of this year alone.

The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC), an organization comprised of the nation's leading rooftop solar companies, applauds the California Legislature for passing Assembly Bill 327, authored by Assembly Member Henry Perea (D- Fresno). AB 327 helps ensure that the rooftop solar industry can continue to grow and create jobs across California. It also addresses a number of important residential electricity rate design issues in a balanced manner.

All across the United States, rooftop solar panels are popping up on homes, businesses and schools like mushrooms in a forest, and utility-scale solar projects are bringing huge amounts of clean energy into our communities. Why? Well, among other things, consumer choice in America is something that we all hold very sacred.

In its latest edition of “Tracking the Sun,” the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) reports installed prices for PV systems fell by a range of $0.30/W to $0.90/W in 2012 from 2011. Within the first six months of 2013, PV system prices in California fell by an additional 10% to 15%, and the annual PV cost tracking report suggests that PV system price reductions in 2013 are on pace to match or exceed those seen in recent years.

Solar is hot. With a foundation of consistent, long-term deployment policies at both the federal and state levels, solar PV in the U.S. is leading an unparalleled price decline on the strength of enduring high demand from U.S. consumers.

A debate currently raging in the California Legislature will greatly influence the state's economic and energy future. The oil and gas industry is lobbying hard to expand hydraulic fracturing – a dangerous process commonly known as fracking – into the Central Valley's world-class agricultural lands, and there's no shortage of controversy over the projected impacts.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has garnered a lot of positive attention lately as it quickly becomes the leading solar-powered electricity purchaser in the U.S. PG&E has not always enjoyed such good press. After all, this is the same company that sprung to notoriety in the wake of Erin Brockovich and the water contamination scandal in Hinkley, Calif. Julia Roberts got an Oscar out of it, but PG&E was synonymous with corporate malfeasance for years. U.S.

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have produced a computer model that demonstrates solar PV power produced for US$1/W could provide one-third of the electricity needs of the western U.S.

BERKELEY —
Low-cost solar power could supply more than a third of all energy needs in the Western U.S., if the nation can hit its targets for reducing the cost of solar energy, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

Although some form of solar power has been available for decades, the technology has only recently gained mainstream acceptance and attracted the interest of big-time utility companies. On a per-kilowatt basis, solar power remains expensive relative to conventional sources of energy like coal and natural gas. Nevertheless, its overall cost continues to shrink at a rapid rate. As solar power becomes an increasingly important component of the country's "energy mix," it's worth taking a look at five major benefits of solar power.

Solar energy is on the rise. America has more than three times as much solar photovoltaic capacity today as in 2010, and more than 10 times as much as in 2007. In the first three months of 2013, solar power accounted for nearly half of the new electricity generating capacity in the United States. The price of solar energy is falling rapidly, and each year tens of thousands of additional Americans begin to reap the benefits of clean energy from the sun, generated right on the rooftops of their homes or places of business.

An investment in solar is an investment in jobs.
Solar investments creates more jobs per megawatt than any other energy resource- seven times more jobs per megawatt than coal production. And, most of the jobs in the solar value chain are local installation jobs, which cannot be outsourced. (Source: UC Berkeley Energy Resources Group) - See more at: http://votesolar.org/solar-fact-room/benefits-of-solar/#sthash.74FUtBMU.dpuf

With a surge in installations in the past three years, the U.S. has joined a small group of nations with 10 gigawatts or more of solar photovoltaic capacity, according to figures released today by the industry watcher NPD Solarbuzz. Despite having birthed modern PV technology in the 1950s, the U.S. has long been playing catch-up in deploying solar power. Germany, the runaway leader in capacity with some 32 GW as of the end of 2012, hit 10 GW back in 2009.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) FiT scheme is set to generate 150MW of energy through rooftop panels. The first demonstration wave of 10MW of projects will be followed by five tranches of 20MW every six months, which will be bought at a fixed price. The scheme also includes a 50MW installation on land in the nearby Mojave Desert.

The U.S.' historic climate change policy, announced today, has a role for solar, but only alongside natural gas, nuclear and CCS as "clean energy technologies." Pledges will add up to more than 13 GW of renewables by 2025.

Secretary Moniz,, who is following in predecessor Steven Chu's footsteps of the aggressive pursuit of renewable energy resources, especially solar. At a U.S. Energy Information Administration-hosted conference on June 17 in Washington, D.C., Moniz voiced his optimism about the future of solar energy."

As SunPower prepares to install its 10,000th residential system, the company says that it anticipates that solar will be on 20 percent of all new homes built in California this year. That’s based on recent trends, like the doubling of solar on new homes between 2011 and 2012, renewed efforts through the California Solar Initiative (CSI) under the New Solar Homes Partnership, and at least two municipalities in California that have revised their building codes to require solar on all new homes."

In the first three months of the year, the U.S. saw PV installations rise 33% to 723 MW, with solar now accounting for 49% of new electric capacity in the country, according to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association's (SEIA) newly published U.S. Solar Market Insight report.

California's solar energy generators set a new record on Friday, June 7, at 12:59 p.m., breaking through the 2-gigawatt landmark to put 2,071 megawatts of electricity on the state's grid. The new milestone was passed less than a year after the state's solar broke through the 1-gigawatt output barrier. The 2,071 megawatts is enough electricity for 1.5 million California homes, according to the California Independent System Operator (the ISO). "This new record is remarkable considering the amount has more than doubled since last September, when solar peaked at 1,000 megawatts," said Steve Berberich, the ISO's President and CEO. "We expect to hit more record peaks ona regular basis."

A solar rooftop company that entered into a long-term contract to supply electricity to a city building in Dubuque, Iowa from solar panels it mounted on the roof is not making retail sales of electricity, an Iowa court said.

Few outside of the solar industry realize how much of an impact local governments can have on the price tag of PV. But with solar module prices having dropped fast and far over the past few years, ‘soft’ costs like local permitting represent the most significant opportunity to keep rooftop solar prices trending down.

The potential energy available via solar power might seem limitless on a sunny summer day, but all that energy has to be stored for it to be truly useful. If you see a solar panel on a rooftop, in a large-scale array, or even on a parking meter, a bulky battery or supercapacitor is hidden just out of sight, receiving energy from the panel through power lines.